Not with the sentence lengths and recidivism rates of our justice system. Do you know how hard it is to get a job and stay out of prison with something like a felony on your record?
There's very many more ex-prisoners in the US than prisoners, so that's manifestly false. (As of 2008, about 1.5 million prisoners and 5.5 million ex-prisoners [1].)
[1] http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/ex-offenders-2010...